


Steps

by LilydaleXF



Category: The X-Files
Genre: F/M, MSR, The X-Files Revival, home again, post-episode
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-20
Updated: 2016-02-20
Packaged: 2018-05-22 01:29:17
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,569
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6065614
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LilydaleXF/pseuds/LilydaleXF
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He silently profiled her for years, quietly filing away everything about her and trying to understand.</p><p>"Home Again" post-episode</p>
            </blockquote>





	Steps

**Author's Note:**

> Big thanks to Anjou for the read-through and insights!

Journey is playing on the radio, so Mulder does not understand why he isn't feeling much better than he actually does. He cracks open his eyes, glances to the left, and remembers.

Scully is driving him home after the scattering of her mother's ashes. He had driven them there, but her eyes became more focused, her limbs became less jellied under his hands, as he held her while sitting at the shore.

He did not ask about her channel selection of The Big 80s. Instead, over miles and miles, he mentally ran through channels she could have chosen instead, slotted songs he knew she liked into each of them, considered the big band music he knew her father loved and her mother loved in turn, debated the merits of lyrics versus orchestrations in a speeding car void of words, and listened for her instinctive emotionally raw sighs when this song played but not when that song played. He eventually chastised himself for profiling Scully, before opening his eyes.

He silently profiled her for years, quietly filing away everything about her and trying to understand. He only discovered when it was both too late and not late enough that Scully would never make sense to him, she would only make everything else make sense. He has loved her with this quiet passion for a very long time.

They do not speak the entire drive home.

Scully stops the car at a haphazard angle in front of the house. Sitting in the car, they turn to each other. She shows a ghost of a smile and has a dampness in her eyes. His face, he thinks, is carefully blank and open for whatever she needs it to be. He gives her a slight nod before stepping out of the car and walking toward the house.

He's already up a few porch stairs when, to his surprise, he hears a car door open and the crunch of hard heeled shoes on pebbles and dry, browned grass. Mulder stops, turns around, and sees Scully standing a few paces from the car. Her face now gives his blankness a run for its money.

Mulder raises his arm out to her. Like electricity to a lightening rod, Scully arcs toward his outstretched fingers. As she draws near, her hand starts to rise just as he begins to sit on a step with his hand falling to his side and patting the space next to him.

She sits too. They do not touch.

After a minute, Scully says, "Do you know why my hair is red?"

He was not expecting that. "I assume it has something to do with you being a witch. The truest witches were often claimed in medieval Europe to have hair of fire. Red hair was so uncommon that it was deemed unnatural, only something someone having otherworldly connections could bear." He pauses as he recalls his own dark wizardry and wonders if Scully is doing the same.

"My father and his brother," she says without missing a beat, "had red hair. Their mother did too. I only saw my uncle a few times as a child. He was in the navy like my father, and the paths of our families almost never crossed. But I knew he had red hair."

"Melissa had red hair too," he softly offers.

"Yes. Melissa had red hair too," she agrees. "Mom always said that was how she knew we were really his, Daddy's girls. We had the Scully hair. Charlie didn't."

There's a pause as Mulder waits for Scully to continue, but he senses she's hit a contemplative wall. He asks, "What does Charlie look like?" Mulder realizes he's never seen so much as one photograph.

"Like Bill. But shorter. And with a heavier scowl."

"Heavier than Bill?" He widens his eyes, contorts his mouth, and makes an undignified eek noise.

Scully chuckles, which prompts Mulder to sneak a side glance to see her eyes crinkle and her cheeks blush. Laughing makes only Scully blush, as if her body is innately embarrassed by such an apparent display of emotion. Which it probably is, even when displayed to him. Other emotions make her blush too. The number of times he's seen her cheeks blush is now up at the infinite, but that feels inadequate, and far away.

She says, "Charlie was never easy. I'm sorry he didn't come out here for Mom, for you to see."

"For you to see, you mean."

"That too."

A beat.

"I'm sorry about your mom, Scully."

"I know, Mulder. Thank you," she says, as she rests her palm on his forearm. He leans his towering head down toward hers. She leans over and meets him halfway, their temples touching. He can feel her heartbeats. They cycle and cycle, and he'd swear that his sync with hers. She'd kick his ass with so many big money scientific words and reams of journal articles if she knew he thought that was remotely possible. But it's true, he thinks. They fall in step for a good long walk.

She eventually lifts up her head, sweetly urging his away. "Go in your house, Mulder. Get some rest," she suggests.

"So it's my house but our decision?"

"What? Yes?" The weight of her hand on him lightens. He's lost her. He's a little lost himself, not quite knowing where that came from.

"You know as well as I do that this was always our house," he says.

Scully whispers a yes so softy he sees her mouth move more than he hears the word. Even with that affirmative her eyebrows rise in question and in anticipation of more. He suddenly feels very small and shy.

He wonders, "Do you think William has red hair?"

"He didn't. You saw him."

"Yeah, but his head then was just a little ball of fluff. That's how Samantha looked as a baby too. That's the Mulders."

She whimpers, "Our baby, Mulder."

"Is that why you keep calling it our decision? Our baby, our sacrifice to give him up?"

"Have I? Said that?"

He nods. Her hand that's still on his arm feels like it re-gains Earth weight.

"Yes. No. I don't -- . It was a confusing time, Mulder."

They fall into such a profound silence that the rest of the land seems to take notice. No bird songs, no rustling tree leaves, no creaking of the house that always seems to have something shifting.

He breaks the bubble. "I get it, Scully, I do. You had my trust."

"Had?"

"Have. Always. But you made the call."

She is still in the quiet bubble.

"It's okay, Scully. Your decision."

She stirs and pulls her hand off of him in a swift jerk. "I don't need your permission or condolences, Mulder. And certainly not at this late time, years later."

He knows he is not being clear. Then again, she's not either. They are a right pair. "It's okay, Scully. For it to have been your decision. Decision for us. Made by you."

Her brows are rising again even as they furrow. How does she do that? Those brows have a very large folder in his mental filing cabinet.

"I just mean," he stammers, "at the time, when it was --"

"It was so hard, Mulder," she interrupts. "You weren't there. Though you were there too." She looks down, shrugs. "William didn't have red hair. You were there too."

The movement of her head down causes her hair to fall like a curtain between them. She's had this long hair for years now, but he still misses when it was shorter and he could see her chin, maybe a hint of cheek, when she looked down, which she did often in lieu of speaking or sharing or laughing in his face. He could tell when she was about to speak after looking down by the way her chin would slightly move just under her hairline as she loosened her lips before she made the final rational decision to speak out loud. He could tell when she was crying, always silently, by seeing a tear sneak down her face and hang on for dear life. With this longer hair, he's on the outside without a clue.

She says, "I saw him the other day, Mulder. William."

He yelps like a cat who's had its tail nearly clipped by a closing door.

"It was a dream," Scully clarifies.

Hallelujah, Scully's head is as muddled as his own.

"Me too."

Her head pops up, the curtain falls. "Really?"

"He didn't have red hair, Scully."

He sees her cheeks blush. Her eyebrows had relaxed at some point he missed. Her eyes raise to his, and they spark. "Guess he's not a witch."

He speaks through a start of a grin, "Guess not."

They're grinning at each other now, sitting there on the stairs. Things change so quickly when he's with Scully, he thinks, even as they never change at all.

"Come on, Scully," he says as he feathers a hand against her shoulder. "You've got tea inside."

He doesn't wait for a reply before he starts to rise. He knows she will get up too, and then she does in a wave after him, the sine to his cosine. His grin expands, as he stores that away to tell Scully one day.

She has a key out before he does, opens the front door, and they're in.

**Author's Note:**

> I can't believe I wrote fic again! Mulder was pretty quiet with Scully in "Home Again," and I wondered why.
> 
> First posted February 12, 2016


End file.
